Burke raised his hand menacingly and seemed about to swing when he spotted a joystick near the computer and slid it over. Normally, Humphrey could maneuver the device with ease and some speed. This time however, he fumbled with it. The smell of Cassie’s clotting blood made it difficult to concentrate, and in addition he was having no luck at all processing who could possibly have sent for him this way. At that moment, he felt Burke’s hand on the back of his neck. A burning, electric pain shot across his shoulders and down his spine. His vision went white.
“I can press on this nerve even harder if you’d like,” Burke said. “You won’t ever pass out. Never ever. Trust me on that.”
Humphrey had been verbally abused for much of his life, but this was the first time anyone had purposely inflicted physical pain on him. He feared this man more than he had ever feared anything or anyone.
In truth, there was little in his electronic files that he did not know virtually by heart, but what little control he might have over whatever was in store for him depended on no one seeing what was in those files. He had a backup system, but the only hard copy at the moment he had given away to his new lab assistant.
Carefully, he wrapped his hand around the joystick and launched a special program he had designed to protect his work from being pirated—a program he called Kill Switch. His program would delete not only all the files from his computer, but from the backups for those files as well. If he ever had to use Kill Switch, he would rely on his memory.
It took just three seconds.
With Burke watching, Humphrey pressed a sequence of keys and the computer monitor flashed and flickered as though it had been powered off and quickly turned back on. Sensing trouble, Burke bent over and stared at the screen. Items he had noted on the electronic desktop had suddenly vanished.
“What did you just do?” he demanded.
Humphrey’s speech, rapid and legitimately frightened, was muddled beyond the killer’s ability to understand. Barely able to control his movements, Humphrey used his joystick to bring up a blank text document into which he typed:
kill application all data deleted forever gone from backup servers too GO FUCK YOURSELF!
“You stupid, crippled jerk!”
Violently, Burke tipped over the surprisingly heavy wheelchair, groaning at the effort and sending Humphrey sprawling through the half-clotted pool of blood and into Cassie’s body. For a minute, he let him lie there, a hermit crab ripped from its shell.
“Now,” he said after regaining a modicum of composure, “you’re going to learn a little of what happens to people who fuck with me.”
Burke set the toe of his boot across the fingers of Humphrey’s left hand, stood on it with all his weight, and held it there.
“From what I’ve been told, you’re a very brilliant scientist. But you’re also very stupid. I have orders to bring you back to the lab at Red Cliff, but I wasn’t instructed to bring back all of your fingers.”
He finally stepped back and crossed to the tiny kitchen, returning with a large carving knife. Careful to avoid the blood, he got down on one knee and pressed the tip of the knife into the knuckle of one of Humphrey’s injured fingers.
“One little push, and you’ll never use this finger to pick your nose again.”
“P-please stop!”
“Now listen and listen good. I know scientists. Scientists don’t ever leave themselves without a copy of their data somewhere. You have to have a backup. You have one, don’t you.” It was a statement, not a question.
The knife point pierced the skin and entered the knuckle.
Humphrey, screaming without sound, managed a nod.
“Good,” Burke said, twisting the blade. “Okay, this is it. Tell me where you keep the backup or you are minus one finger. And I’ll still have nine to play with. Understand?” A nod. “Ready to cooperate and not do anything else stupid?”
“Y-yes.”
Burke pulled the wheelchair upright, lifted his prey off the ground, and dropped him like a rag doll into the seat. Humphrey’s teeth snapped closed on the side of his tongue. Blood frothed out the corner of his mouth. Burke pushed the bloody apparition to his computer and again shoved the joystick at him.
“Okay, where is the backup copy?” Burke asked.
Humphrey, spitting blood onto his shirtsleeve, fumbled with the joystick, but finally, the letters appeared on the screen.
There is no data backup.
Burke put the knife to Humphrey’s wounded knuckle once more.
“I told you not to mess with me! There is a backup somewhere. Now, where is it? This is your last chance before pieces of you begin to fly. And do it fast. I’m running out of time.”
Humphrey’s hands were shaking too much to type.
“Please, take knife away,” he said.
Burke did not oblige.
“Jesus. I can barely understand a word you’re saying. Just nod. Is this guy in Atlanta?… Good. Can you tell me where?… You don’t know? Okay, type what you do know. Remember. One lie and that finger goes, and I’m gonna love doing it.… Hospital. He’s at the hospital? The one you work at?… Excellent. If he’s there, I can find him. If he’s not, this knife and I are going to pay you another visit. Now, once more, type out his name.… Good. Now, grab anything you need because you won’t be coming back here for a long time. And don’t think for an instant that this Dr. Lou Welcome won’t turn your work over to me. Unless he’s as badly deformed as you are, he’ll have plenty of fingers for me to work on.”
CHAPTER 38
When it comes to commitment, you are either fully engaged or not, for there is no gray area. Half measures will avail us nothing.
—LANCASTER R. HILL, 100 Neighbors, SAWYER RIVER BOOKS, 1939
His ringing cell phone roused Vaill from a dreamless sleep. Even before answering it, he began testing himself. Stiff sheets, unfamiliar mattress, LG TV propped up on the dresser at the foot of the bed. He was in a hotel—a Marriott in downtown Atlanta. The room curtains were like lead shields, and if the sun had already come up, it was impossible to tell. The ringing continued. Vaill fumbled for the phone, knocking over his bottle of Tylenol. His voice was sleep-drenched.
“Yeah, Vaill here.”
“Tim, it’s Chuck.”
Vaill brightened.
“Hey, buddy, what’s going on? What time is it?”
“Sorry to wake you, sleeping beauty. I actually thought you’d already be gone. It’s eight-thirty.”
“Shit.”
Vaill sat up and felt a twinge behind his eyes, but nothing materialized. He had planned to get Welcome to the Richard B. Russell Federal Building and the district court magistrate judge before nine. Now he’d be hard-pressed to make it there by ten. No big deal, he supposed.
“Don’t worry about it,” McCall said. “It’s probably just as well if Welcome’s not moved around too much.”
“Yeah? Why’s that?”
“I just got a call from the team Snyder sent over with a warrant to Miller’s apartment. They found the place trashed, and a dead body in a pool of clotted blood in the middle of the floor. Humphrey’s gone. The guys are knocking on doors now, but so far no one saw or heard anything. The victim’s name is Cassie Bayard. She works for a company that provides home health services. Took two in the chest from close range.”
Burke!
“Shit,” Vaill muttered again. “What’s the T.O.D.?”
“The police forensic guys checked body temperature and stiffness of the corpse and put the T.O.D. between five-thirty and seven-thirty this morning, but the pathologist should be able to narrow that down even more.”
“What did Snyder say?”
“She’s freaked and so am I. It was her call on my advice to get the search warrant for the lab first and use that as probable cause to get a warrant to search Miller’s apartment and question him. That may have cost us a couple of hours. Now she’s feeling the heat from above.”
Vaill never questioned Snyder�
��s decision to move cautiously on Miller. She never acted impulsively, which is why there were jokes about her sleeping with the FBI’s procedures manual under her pillow. Snyder’s commitment to protocol was probably the reason she’d risen in the ranks while Vaill was still in the field.
Now, in spite of himself, Vaill began considering a rushing stream of other explanations for this latest disaster—especially the possibility that Burke wasn’t the only one in the agency who was working for the Society of One Hundred Neighbors.
The first mention of Humphrey Miller and his connection to Ahmed Kazimi had come from Lou Welcome at two-thirty that morning, and had almost immediately been relayed to Beth by McCall. Who she talked to after that was anyone’s guess. Now Miller was gone and a woman was dead in his apartment, with the stench of Alexander Burke’s close-range M.O. hanging heavy in the air. Even after exhaustive backtracking, to this day, nobody knew how the killer had infiltrated the organization. Did he have help from the inside? If so, someone else in the agency was on One Hundred Neighbors’ payroll.
“Chuck,” Vaill asked, “did you put Humphrey Miller’s name into the I.D.W. after you phoned it in to Beth?”
I.D.W. stood for Investigation Data Warehouse, and it was where all leads associated with active cases got logged in by the investigating agents. Vaill knew that he was being intentionally cagey with his partner. Their pairing was fairly new. How much did he really know about the man? What if McCall had worked his way onto the investigation team the same way Burke had infiltrated Kazimi’s security detail?
Vaill’s mind was spinning.
This was the second major security breach. Who in the hell could he trust?
“Right after I called Snyder I keyed the new leads into the I.D.W. from my phone,” McCall replied.
More possible sources of leaks. The I.D.W hadn’t been in place long, and already had a reputation as a sieve.
Vaill pried the curtains apart. Bright sunlight hit him like a straight-on jab. He squinted against the glare and the renewed throbbing, and sucked down three extra-strength Tylenols without any water. In passing, he considered reporting his suspicions to Internal Affairs. But if the leaker turned out to be someone high up the food chain, they’d probably get Vaill kicked off the investigation within hours, if not out of the agency altogether. For the moment at least, he decided that his best chance to avenge Maria would be to operate in the shadows while keeping his mistrust for the FBI a secret.
“So,” McCall was saying, “how about letting Welcome fester a bit longer in jail and come check out Miller’s apartment with me?”
There were rules for how long Welcome could be detained without due process, but like anything pertaining to terrorism, those rules could be bent or even broken. Still, McCall had unknowingly brought up yet another consideration. If One Hundred Neighbors wanted Humphrey dead or captured, it was reasonable to assume they could be targeting Lou Welcome as well. Those two men were more than passing acquaintances. Since he no longer trusted the FBI, Vaill knew he alone had to protect Welcome, at least until he got more facts.
“I’m getting another call, Chuck,” Vaill lied. “Hang on the line a second.”
Vaill cupped the phone and counted slowly to twenty. Maria often complimented his ability to think creatively. Exhausted as he was, he at least had not lost a step in that regard.
“Chuck, are you still there?” he asked finally.
“I’m here.”
“That was Welcome. Apparently he’s got more information to share about the Neighbors, and he wants to cut a deal. But for whatever reason he says he’ll only talk to me, and he won’t do it there. I’m going to go and get him.”
“Then what are you going to do?” McCall asked. “You need help?”
“Not as long as there are handcuffs in the world. I’ll take him into protective custody and just learn what he has to say.”
It was a good lie because McCall would have no reason to bring it to Snyder’s attention … unless the two of them were connected in other ways.
“Okay,” McCall said. “I’ll be at Miller’s. Call or meet me there after.”
He gave Vaill the address.
“Sounds good. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
Vaill showered quickly and got dressed, thinking that if McCall turned out to be the mole, he’d have no problem shooting to kill.
CHAPTER 39
Where there is no entitlement, there is no iniquity.
—LANCASTER R. HILL, 100 Neighbors, SAWYER RIVER BOOKS, 1939, P. 12
The electronic release buzzed open a heavy steel door, and the two burly U.S. Marshals who had handcuffed Lou’s wrists behind him escorted him into the small foyer of a rear entrance in the Atlanta jail. Having been briefed on the punch list of procedures he could expect, Lou was a bit surprised his ankles and wrists hadn’t been chained for this trip to the courthouse. He was also surprised that there was no other security ready to transport him. The only one waiting in the dim light was FBI Special Agent Timothy Vaill.
“The face is familiar,” Lou said, pointing at him. “Haven’t I seen you some place before?”
“These guys take decent care of you?”
“They wouldn’t look like they’re both on steroids if they had to eat the food here, but yes, they’ve all been okay. Thanks for caring. Now, about the lawyer I never got a chance to call.”
“Oh, yeah. Well, the court would have appointed one for you, and he or she would have scheduled an arraignment date. No big deal, and no matter. You’re still my prisoner, and I have some things I need to speak with you about.”
Even in the subdued light Lou could see the strain enveloping the man’s eyes. Something had gone wrong.
“You don’t look so good,” he said.
“Neither do you.”
“Got me there,” Lou said, grinning.
He had caught a glimpse of himself in a mirror in the guards’ room as they passed by. His five o’clock shadow had grown to about quarter after eleven, and the date clothes he had worn to meet Vicki—dark jeans and a nice oxford shirt—looked like they had been rescued from a gas station’s collection bin. The orange jumpsuit, he had been told, would come after he was returned to his cell to await arraignment. In truth, even the nasty times on the street had not prepared him for this experience.
But now it didn’t seem like court was in his immediate future. Instead, it appeared that something had gone wrong. Maybe very wrong. His first thought was Cap.
A nod from Vaill, and the burlier marshal with the nameplate Gomes pinned to his tan shirt undid Lou’s handcuffs long enough to have them replaced by the ones brought in by Vaill.
“You’re still my prisoner until you’ve been formally charged,” he said, “so no screwing around or I’ll hurt you.”
“Nicely put,” Lou said. “Very nice.”
“He’s all yours, my friend,” the marshal pronounced. “If he doesn’t work or should he break, just bring him back for a full refund.”
“Thanks, boys. I’m hoping the good doctor is going to be more cooperative this time around.”
Vaill signed some papers then took hold of Lou’s arm and led him out. The familiar, nondescript gray sedan was parked nearby. Lou settled into the backseat, turned away from the mesh screen, and watched the jailhouse shrink from view as they drove away. There had been times when the American justice system had actually been kind to him. The last eighteen or so hours had not been one of them.
“You’re not going back there again, doc,” Vaill said, eyeing Lou in the rearview mirror.
Lou swung around to face him.
“No judge?” he asked.
“No judge. Things have changed.”
Vaill pulled the car to an abrupt stop, opened a rear door, and unlocked Lou’s handcuffs.
“You were right when you said I was entering wonderland,” Lou said.
“You want to sit up front?”
“Okay, I get it. This some new form of torture to replace
waterboarding, right? Confession by confusion. I’ll come up front, but only after you tell me what this is all about.”
Vaill sighed.
“Your pal Humphrey Miller has gone missing,” he said. “A woman was found shot dead in his apartment and Miller is nowhere to be found. I have a strong feeling that the person who shot her was the son of a bitch who killed my Maria. If so, that means the Neighbors have both Kazimi and Miller. I think I mentioned the bastard’s name last night. Burke—Alexander Burke. Listen, you’re not a prisoner anymore, doc, so join me up front if you want.”
“Tell me everything,” Lou said, numbly sinking onto the seat Vaill’s partner had occupied.
“We sent agents to Miller’s place and to your basement lab at Arbor General. The lab was right where you said it was. Miller didn’t show up for work this morning. Now we got a dead body and another missing microbiologist. I’m guessing he’s been kidnapped, not killed—at least not yet. The Neighbors are getting desperate, but damn, they are good. That’s where we stand.”
Lou buried his face in his hands as Vaill eased back into traffic.
“Cap,” he whispered.
Vaill shook his head, making no attempt to mask his empathy.
“No miracle cures waiting to happen,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
For a minute, two, there was only silence.
“So, what do you think?” Lou was finally able to ask.
“I think there’s a significant security breach at the FBI. That’s what I think. If there is, that’s how Burke got onto the detail that was guarding Kazimi. Until now, I thought he did it on his own—learned enough about the Neighbors and their beliefs to locate them and offer himself up or else just sell Kazimi to them. But now that the information we got from you somehow already made it back to the Neighbors, I have to believe there’s someone inside the agency who turned Burke. I just don’t know who.”
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